


it's just the litany of the midlife crisis

by marrieddorks



Series: stepbrothers 'verse [1]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Comedy, M/M, Stepbrothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 12:43:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13434963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marrieddorks/pseuds/marrieddorks
Summary: Jared is the best friend Chad could ever ask for (until the pesky problem named Jensen comes along).





	it's just the litany of the midlife crisis

**Author's Note:**

> thank you, Merin, for the quick beta and summary-help, and I hope you all enjoy the ridiculousness of this as much as I enjoy writing it :)

“Do you think he’ll notice?” 

The question was asked while standing in the middle of an unbusy suburban street in Georgetown, staring at the tilted and overflowing garbage can sitting precariously on the edge of the curb. 

“Oh yeah, he’ll notice.”

“Shit!” Chad started. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, Jared! He’s going to kill me!” As if on cue, it was then that the garbage can decided to topple over, and Chad and Jared watched with differing types of horror as its remains spilled all over the grass and street alike, its crash echoing too loudly in the slow-moving neighborhood. Jared threw an awkward wave to Mr. Carrow, a bespectacled old man three houses down who was outside watering his lawn, his look disapproving and sealed with a sneer. 

“How do you even make that much trash by yourself?” Jared asked, turning back to Chad with a sort of awe in his voice that paid no mind to Chad’s current crisis. “You can’t cook, you don’t clean,” his voice trailed. “If there’s a mountain of tissues in that, Chad, I swear to God –”

“Not the time, Jared!” Chad was already on the ground shoveling as much of the fallen trash back into the can as he could, a hysteria in his eyes. “What if we took some of this to your house? We can go get more garbage bags and fill them and then –”

“Sure, Chad, my mom would love that,” Jared rolled his eyes. 

“I can’t die yet, Jared! Think of all the things I haven’t done!” Chad yelled, his voice cracking on Jared’s name. “We just graduated high school! Life hasn’t even begun yet! I never got to go to Vegas. I never got to ride in a Ferrari. I never got to bang Kate Upton. I never even got to buy my own beer!” His fingers were digging into Jared’s forearm and it took a good grip to extract them, their mark a stark pink on Jared’s tan skin. 

“Dude,” Jared said. “You need to calm down. This is not the end of the world, this is you forgetting to take out the trash. Again. Do you really think your dad is going to be surprised?” 

“No, and that’s the problem!” A swift kick landed on the black plastic, sending what little garbage Chad had managed to stuff back into the can onto the ground once more. “When my dad left, he gave me two things that I had to do: I had to take the trash out and I had to not break anything in the house.”

“.... What did you break, Chad?” 

“Nothing that important,” Chad muttered quickly. He clumsily dropped to sit on the curb, his back slumped, his posture defeated. “I can kiss the rest of summer goodbye. The house is destroyed, and my dad is going to be so pissed.”

“Chad,” Jared sighed. “If I help you clean up your house, will you stop bitching like the biggest bitch ever?”

“I will totally stop bitching!” Chad exclaimed, demeanor entirely changed in a split-second. “I’ll never bitch again! You won’t ever hear a bitching word out of my mouth for as long as I live.” He was doing a mock Boy Scout-salute, three fingers in the air, but with his other hand over his heart too, and Jared clapped him on the shoulder after pulling him to his feet. 

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“In me have faith, my young Padawanalecki,” Chad said, walking backwards so he could make swirly hand motions. 

“Chad, you couldn’t even keep two promises to your dad for three weeks, what makes you think you’ll be able to never bitch again? Besides, you’re actually the worst bitcher ever. You bitch all the time.”

“Do not!”

“Do too!”

“Do not!”

“Do too!”

“Do n—whoa!” Chad shrieked in a horribly high-pitched sound that he would so deny for the rest of his life, and that left Jared in stitches with laughter.

“Oh, there’s a plant right there, Chad,” Jared grinned, looking down at Chad’s sprawled figure now covered in soil.

“Yeah, thanks for the heads-up, dickweed.”

“Are you really going to say that to me after I offered to help you clean your house? That’s messed up, dude.”

“Jared! My dad will kill me, please,” Chad bitched, and Jared laughed and helped him back to his feet, again, before walking in the house, Chad mumbling and dusting his clothes off best he could before entering. 

Jared’s laughter died off, however, into a horrified silence that had Chad stopping in his tracks in the same abrupt manner, nearly running into Jared’s back in the process. 

“Dude, you okay?”

“Um, Chad?” Jared asked back instead of answering, his eyebrows drawn together.

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to need backup.” 

The living room alone was what appeared to be the result of a tornado, most definitely; the blinds in the windows were twisted and turned, the original shape unrecognizable, and the curtains that were intended to go in front of the blinds were woven all through the twists and turns. That is, the curtains that were still hanging and not ripped and lying on the floor below were woven all through the twists and turns. There was a grease stain on the carpet by the coffee table from where a pizza box had been, and at least thirty different DVD and video game cases were littering the floor in front of the television. A dozen pairs of dirty socks were strewn across the couch, along with at least two pairs of boxers (and Jared didn’t even want to know what events ended with them staying there) and the one lone pillow had what looked like a Mountain Dew coloration on its entire left side. 

“I don’t even want to see the kitchen. Or the bathroom. Or your room. Especially your room,” Jared said slowly. 

“Is it really that bad?”

“Do you have eyes, Chad?” 

“Fuck! I know, I know. Um. Okay, we can’t call Tommy for backup, because I slept with his girlfriend a few months ago and he’s still pissed. We can’t call Mike, because he and Tommy are up each other’s asses all the time. We can’t call Sophia, because she was Tommy’s girlfriend that I slept with, ruining that relationship. We can’t –”

“Chad, if we go through the entire list of people we can’t call because you screwed them over in one way or another, we’ll be here all night. Give me five minutes,” Jared told him, his cellphone already in hand. 

“Who’s going to come here to help you? I’m serious about not calling Tommy, he tried to kick my ass last time I ran into him.”

Several minutes later, there was a knock on the front door and in came Megan with two of her friends in tow, their fifteen-year-old faces pulled into the most triumphant of smirks.

“We came prepared,” Megan said with a grin, jiggling the tote of cleaning supplies in her hand. “I’ll take the kitchen, Kelly and Marissa agreed to clean the living room, and you two can do the bedroom and bathroom because no way are we touching either of those. Deal?”

“It’s a deal, Meg, just do your thing,” Jared told her with a sigh and an eye-roll that only became more dramatic when she walked by him with too much bounce in her step, Kelly and Marissa at her heels.

“How’d you get them to come over here?” Chad stage-whispered. 

“I agreed to take them to the mall this week and also agreed to do Meg’s summer reading homework,” Jared muttered defeatedly. “You so owe me. Actually, this is beyond just being owed.”

“You’re a true hero, Jay.”

After forty-five minutes of deep cleaning (accompanied by Jared’s Pearl Jam playlist because there was no way Chad was going to get to play his own music, too), things were already resembling a semi-stable household once more. Kelly and Marissa had successful untangled and untwisted the blinds and replaced the torn curtains with brand new ones they found in the hallway closet on the top shelf. Megan had the dishwasher loaded with a load of horribly greasy and sticky plates, cups, and bowls, and was soaking the plate from the microwave and a cup which had had a questionable substance inside. Jared had taken over laundry duty, plugging his nose and wearing a pair of gloves while transporting clothes from Chad’s bedroom floor and bathroom to the washing machine and trying to get all the darks and colors done first so he could bleach anything and everything white last. Chad himself had managed to clean the toilet without too much gagging involved and was in the process of scrubbing the shower floor when Megan came in, yellow rubber gloves covered in suds all the way up to her elbows. 

“Hey, do you know if you have any more dish soap for your kitchen?” 

“Dish soap?” Chad asked, eyebrows by his hairline. “Is there any under the sink?”

“You would think there would be, but no,” Megan said. “I can run home and grab a bottle real quick.”

“Hold on, hold on. Let me look.” Chad groaned when he pushed himself back up, making his way to the kitchen on legs shaking like he had just ran a marathon. 

“Thanks again, Meg,” Jared said as soon as Chad was out of earshot. “Chad’s a mess. And his dad is supposed to be home later tonight.”

“Where’s he been anyway?” she asked, pulling the rubber gloves off for a moment to let her hands breathe. 

“He’s been off on some cruise. Bunch of hot-shot lawyers went, I think for some networking event or something.”

“Who has a networking event on a cruise ship?”

“Rich lawyers who can afford it.”

“And he just left Chad. Here. By himself,” Megan said slowly.

“Well, Chad is legally an adult, despite what we all think. And it probably wouldn’t have been so bad if I wouldn’t have been gone all this week looking at Duke University ‘one more time. Just to be sure I made the right decision,’” Jared said, making air quotes as he imitated their father horribly. 

“Found some!” Chad yelled, rushing into the room suddenly, a bottle of blue soap in hand. “It was in the garage.”

“Why was your dish soap in the garage?”

“I don’t know, do you think I’ve ever bought a bottle of dish soap in my life? C’mon, Jay.”

“Point taken.” 

“Alright, awesome then. I’m going to finish the dishes and wipe down the counters and make sure the microwave and oven are clean. I’ll mop the floor last.”

“Chad is going to finish up his bathroom,” Jared began, ignoring a dirty look thrown from Chad, “and I’ve got laundry going and should at least have it all in the washer before Mr. Murray gets here. When should he be home?”

“He said his flight was landing at five, and it’s a forty-minute drive from the airport to here, so I would say six o’clock.”

“That gives us an hour,” Megan said, her grip on the mop handle becoming white-knuckled.

“We can do plenty in one hour.”

And the second hour of deep cleaning commenced; Chad scrubbed at his bathroom floors with the sort of vigor only found in a desperate man, and too much laughing occurred when he ran into the kitchen to scour for more supplies, only to fall on the mop-wet linoleum. But an hour passes by quickly when hard at work, and before they knew it, their hour was up. 

“Okay, he’s going to be here any minute,” Chad started. “I’m sweaty and gross, so I’m going to change clothes. You know my dad, always about that Murray-men sensibility.”

“Well if he’s all about your sensibility, you need to put on deodorant.” 

Chad took a whiff under his arms, and pulled back, nose pinched. “Yeah, that too.”

“You, uhh, you might want to hurry,” Megan half-shouted to them both, her figure illuminated by the close proximity of headlights from the road. “He’s pulling in right now.”

“Shit!” Chad started again, the same tone from before leaking through. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, Jared!” 

“Calm down!” Jared said, and his hands were on Chad, shoving him back toward his bedroom. “Go change your rank clothes and get back out here. Megan and her friends will go out the back.”

“We’re already leaving. Don’t forget our deal though, big brother! I’m asking Mom if I can double my chores this week to double my allowance,” Megan sing-songed as she, Marissa, and Kelly snuck out the back door in the kitchen. 

“She’s going to spend all of her money on art supplies, just watch. She thinks she’s Picasso,” Jared said loudly to Chad.

“I’m more like Cezanne, thank you very much.”

“Who?” Chad whispered.

“Go! Both of you!” Jared said instead of answering, panic rising as they heard the doorknob rattle with movement. Both Chad and Megan disappeared just in time for Richard Murray to walk in the front door, a clean and stereotypical black suitcase in hand. 

“Mr. Murray!” Jared greeted, his smile too wide and his stance awkward as he tried to figure out a natural way to position his body where he stood. 

“Jared,” Richard started off slowly, “Jared, it’s good to see you. You keep my son out of trouble while I was gone?”

“Yes, sir. Most definitely. Chad’s changing clothes. We played some basketball down at Rowan Park today. It’s a hot one out there today. Probably not as hot as your cruise was though,” Jared rambled. 

“I’ll tell you, I didn’t notice the heat all that much,” Richard said, and Jared was a little concerned at the drowsy smile on the man’s face. 

“Too busy with all the networking to notice?”

“Dad!” Chad yelled out, skidding down the hallway in fresh white socks, Risky Business-style, but thankfully with pants, and Jared and Richard both waited until Chad steadied himself, hands on the newly-moved chair in the living room. “You’re home! You got a tan.”

“Chad,” Richard started, and Chad immediately flared up at the tone.

“Dad, I know what you’re going to say, but –”

“Chad –”

“All the trash is out at the curb –”

“Chad –”

“And the dishes are done! All the dishes, totally done –”

“Chad –” 

“And laundry! I even separated my darks from my lights –”

“Chad –”

“Yeah, okay, Jared told me that’s how I had to do laundry, but I did it! And –”

“Chad!” Richard finally screamed, shutting Chad up (a rare occurrence for everyone). But the scream wasn’t angry and that same drowsy smile was still on his face, and Jared and Chad shared a look.

“Uh, Dad, are you okay? Did all the sun get to your head?” Chad asked. 

“No, that’s not it,” Richard said, moving forward to put both of his hands on Chad’s shoulders. “I got married, son.”


End file.
